Purpose: Explore main aspects of HIV-positive peoples experiences of HIV-stigma to increase our knowledge about how nurses can prevent and minimize HIV-related stigma. The findings in this study was compared with the results from the Fafo report "Fra holdninger til levekår. Liv med HIV i Norge" to produce a synthesized knowledge, and to discuss relevance to Norwegian circumstances.

Literature review: The studys theoretical foundation is Goffmans (1963) understanding of stigma as a social labeling of the individual with loss of value and og attractiveness.

Method: Metasynthesis of selected qualitative studies that explored HIV-stigma and with HIV-positive people as the studies population. Metasummary was used as an empirical foundation for the metasynthesis. Constant targeted comparison was used to synthesize the findings.

Results: 8 main aspects of experiences of HIV-stigma were identified, transformed in to 8 abstracted findings and sorted under the key-concepts: shame, guilt, fear of contagion, stereotyping/prejudging, social rejection/isolation, breach of confidence, experiences with health services and disclosure/secrecy. The finding sorted under the key-concept shame was the aspect of experience of HIV-stigma that was weighted lowest in this studys research articles (45 %), while disclosure/secrecy was identified in 10 of the studys 11 articles (91 %). The majority of HIV-positive people in this study practice a very limited disclosure to other people, because of fear of being stigmatized. This studys 8 main aspects of HIV-stigma are very comparable to the experiences of the Norwegian HIV-positive people from the Fafo report.

Conclusion: The findings show that experience of HIV-stigma is both a reflection of other peoples possible reaction and actually experienced. The studys results indicate that there are experiences of HIV-stigma in spite of socio-demographic factors that nurses can predict and prevent.